Balurghat, Aug. 5: A court here today granted bail to a person after police admitted that the arrest warrant had been issued against his dead father.

Sabek Hossain, arrested for sheltering Bangladeshi infiltrators, approached the chief judicial magistrate, Debasish Chowdhury, after he found that the warrant had been issued against his father Rahamutullah who had passed away three years ago.

Hossain, a resident of Mollahar village, had been arrested from Balurghat bus stand by Harirampur police in January 2002 for harbouring five Bangladeshi infiltrators. He was later produced in the court which granted him bail.

After he was charge-sheeted, Hossain was supposed to appear in the court for hearing between December, 2004 and February 2005. But Hossain, who was away in Delhi, did not turn up in the court even once.

As a result, the court ordered the Harrampur police to issue an arrest warrant against him. While executing the order, the police made a goof up and issued the warrant against his father Rahamutullah who had died in 2005.

Finding that an arrest warrant had been issued against his deceased father, Hossain approached the court and brought to its notice that the police had made a gaffe.

Granted bail, Hossain said he was relieved that the court had cancelled the warrant against his father. He added that his aim now was to fight the case.

“It is not fair to drag the name of my father, who is no more, into the case. So I approached the court for justice,” he said.

Tushar Panja, the inspector-in-charge of Harirampur police station, said it was an unintentional mistake. “It was just a clerical error which has been rectified,” he said.